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Michael Skibsted

@michael.skibstedd

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Researcher, writer, speaker.
Fascinated by turtles and tortoises and life.
Pictures from my excursions.
⚡️𝘍𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘹, 𝘲𝘶𝘪 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘶𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘶𝘮 𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘴⚡️
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When he isn’t crunching numbers, traveling the world, or dealing with the consequences of chronic sleep deprivation, @michael.skibstedd is writing beautiful prose in support of the Panhandle Turtle Project. Please help us raise $15,000 to secure all the funding for our designated turtle research vessel, if you are able! #turtle #poetry #tothepoint #vogue by @michael.skibstedd
4
20 days ago
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What is our mission, you ask?#restorewaterquality #itstartslocal #noactionistoosmall #getoutinnature #saveturtles by @michael.skibstedd
4
24 days ago
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We spend a lot of time in the field. Sometimes we come across some really strange anomalies...This female map turtle was one such example. We caught her during a survey with @cheloniagodwin on the Pea River, where Escambia and Barbour's map turtles (G. ernsti and G. barbouri) are known to hybridize. In almost every physical way this turtle was an outlier. She was clearly ancient, but was far smaller than the typical size for fully grown females of either species (see photo #2 vs average sized female in photo #3). Her midline carapace length was only 18.3 cm, which is well below the normal range of ~22-30 cm for females of her age class. Those few centimeters in carapace length have significant implications for volume; she is essentially a dwarf. Her coloration was also incredibly odd. She was extremely melanistic (which is NOT a typical trait for females of either species) and she'd lost nearly all of the patterning on her head and limbs, to the point where she barely resembled others of her own kind. One of her eyes was totally opaque and appeared non-functional, while the other one was unusually pigmented but still functioned. As we continue to explore this relatively uncharted river system, we will keep making new observations and ultimately uncover more about the natural history of these hybrid map turtles that it hosts. #turtle research #panhandleturtleproject #graptemys by @michael.skibstedd
3
a month ago
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The American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus once said that an infinite passion for something finite gives you a world. We only have one shot at life, and the struggle to find meaning within it is the ultimate phenomenological challenge. Dreyfus made it clear that to him, meaning in this life, was to be found in a radically passionate pursuit of something external to ourselves.I feel lucky that for whatever reason I contracted a disease-like obsession with turtles at an early age. I still vividly remember sitting in the back of my mom’s car at a Mobil gas station first reading about turtles. In those moments of initial ignition there was an ethereal fascination that washed over me. I was strangely captivated by the diversity in turtle layouts - from domed, elephantine, terrestrial tortoises to streamlined sea turtles that could weigh over a ton. I was captivated by the turtles’ ability to withstand extreme environments, like freezing temperatures and those without oxygen. And I was impressed by the unchanging age of the turtle lineage, thousands of members having come and gone through the eons, all the while staying true to a shell and a suit of turtle-parts. Something clicked on this day in 2nd grade that has not changed since. As I write this, having just finished undergrad, wielding the fresh tools of some of general mathematical biology, a somewhat deep understanding of computers, having ridden a rollercoaster through the genome, suffered through enough economics to induce a month-long panic attack, literarily traversed the peaks and valleys biodiversity from genes to landscapes, and working to develop a company that can apply these things to universal problems, I am reminded that the turtles have given me the motivation to expand my interests, a reason to care about things, and a desire to learn an ounce more everyday. Through the adventures I’ve been fortunate to have taken in numerous countries and most of the U.S. states, they have given me deep connections to people and to place. Taken together, turtles have given me direction and connection, through which I can maybe untangle meaning. Something analogous to a world. #WorldTurtleDay #Cool by @michael.skibstedd
28
2 months ago
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The Southeastern United States, roughly defined by the boundaries of the latest biodiversity hotspot - the North American Coastal Plain - is unparalleled in its richness of aquatic life. Nowhere on earth can such vibrant assemblages of such disparate freshwater taxa be found. SE U.S. freshwater ecosystems support something near 41% of global freshwater mussel species, 33% of global crayfish species, 14% of global turtle richness, 2/3rds of the the United States’ fish richness, and about half of its dragonflies and damselflies. Perhaps a surprise to some, Alabama, which has been called “America’s Amazon” on occasion, is by far the most freshwater species-rich region in the Southeastern U.S. Just this state alone harbors between 10-15% of global freshwater mussel and crayfish species richness, something near 10% of global salamander richness, >2% of global freshwater gastropod (snail) and fish species richness, and a lot of frogs too. In terms of an underwater safari, you’d be hard pressed to find a better place to go than the Southeastern USA. The reasons for why the SE US is so species rich are extremely complex and interacting, but broadly a relatively stable tectonic history over the recent geological past coupled with the realization that glaciers rarely got very close to the region while still causing its ocean coverage to fluctuate, set the stage for an array of abiotic factors like rainfall, temperature, geology, topography, stream diversity, and the thousands of other MAXENT parameters that parse these variables in different ways, to link hands and be the arbiters of what of Monod’s chance proliferates, and where it establishes a niche. The niche space in SE US freshwater ecosystems is massive, exemplified in one case by the 60-70 species of mussel found in the Coosa River. But today the Coosa has a fraction of this diversity. It’s the same story in the many rivers across the region. Pollution, degradation and destruction of habitat, concordant erosion, and irresponsible use of water have wreaked havoc on SE freshwater assemblages. Of the groups aforementioned 30-70% of their members face imminent extinction in the region. by @michael.skibstedd
37
2 months ago
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The Escambia map turtle (Graptemys ernsti) is endemic to the Western Florida Panhandle and Southeastern Alabama. Along with the Western Alligator Snapping Turtle, it's one of our primary study species. Dr. Robert Shealy conducted the most extensive study of the species' natural history in the 1970s, and nothing comparable has been done since. We are evaluating the ecology, morphology, and population status of the Escambia map turtle half a century later. #panhandleturtleproject #mapturtle #escambiamapturtle by @michael.skibstedd
2
2 months ago
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Meet the core field team for the PTP (from left to right):Michael Skibsted, Jeremy Thompson, Paul Cuneo & Jack Thompson. You’d be hard pressed to amass a better snorkel crew. #panhandleturtleproject by @michael.skibstedd
6
2 months ago
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Admiring a Common Snapping Turtle this #EarthDay. The earth is an incredible place with a lot of known facts, but a whole lot more mystery. Especially when it comes to biodiversity, the sum-total of the life on earth, as humans, we know even less than we think we do about the living around us. Just take trying to tally up the number of species on earth as an example of one of the many pervasive mysteries. The famed entomologist and biologist E. O. Wilson popularized this subject in his many eloquent treatments of it. While progress since Wilson’s discourses on determining the number of species on earth has been made in the sense that more species have been discovered, with each of these discoveries comes associated uncertainty and further questions about the true number. For instance, only relatively recently has it become possible to obtain high quality genome sequences/assemblies at scale and “low” cost. As the base code of life, access to genomes is a huge help in delimiting species, especially for physically small or morphologically cryptic groups like bacteria/protists or groups of insects like micromoths. However, with an improved window into the coding of these groups has come the realization that previous estimates of the number of species all may have been frighteningly low, missing the mark by maybe as much as eight orders of magnitude in the bacteria to take one example. But it’s all up to DIAMOND, BLAST, BUSCO, Flye, and a whole suite of other applications married to mathematical algorithms that advance by the day to eventually decide what the true number is. For now we will have to settle knowing that progress in one of an infinitude of interesting biological questions means that the variance in the estimate has increased from between 10-100 million species to now 10 million to maybe multiple trillion species. So we have become more confident that we know less about the diversity of life around us as humans. I find our collective ignorance about the immensity of the life around us fascinating, as well as a call to pursue understanding it, and as a reminder to protect it. Find some time today to admire and to wonder about what we don’t know. by @michael.skibstedd
59
3 months ago
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There is both intrinsic and instrumental value to turtles. It is both moral and pragmatic to appreciate and protect this incredibly unique group of animals. The Testudines and their ancestors are a group older than the dinosaurs. From the earliest stem turtles, to their ~488 modern taxa, and the thousands of intermediates come and gone, the turtles have remained both a shocking conglomeration of unique adaptations and very unchanged. They’ve mastered land and sea, oxygen-rich and anoxic environments, life in a shell, and how to persist. Their way of life has captivated us, evidenced by their prominent place in our collective human culture. They are a unique group, deserved of a seat at the table of existence, simply in that they exist and inspire. If the former argument is not enough, which I believe to be the case for many people, probably for good reason in many cases, it is useful to note that when evolutionary biology is wedded with the incentive to conserve, a good deal of directly “selfish” reasons to promote turtle conservation - and conservation broadly - arise. To start, the turtles are more similar to us as humans than you might think. We generally live to comparable ages and reach maturity around the same time. Considering these similarities in life history with the fact that many solutions in human medicine simply require looking to nature, it stands to reason the turtles can teach us a lot about ourselves, directly in some cases, indirectly in others. By deciphering the genetic code of the turtles, and pontificating on how natural selection has shaped it, breakthroughs in cancer, diabetes, aging, reperfusion injury, epigenetics, genomic landscape, human evolution, etc. research lie within reach. By looking under the turtle’s hood, we can save numerous lives, and enrich many others. On this #WorldTurtleDay please take a moment to reflect on what turtles mean to you, and if you’re inclined, take a step to protect this most threatened group of vertebrates. Do it for them, yourself, your family, or your friends. We all have a stake in life because we’re living, and can learn from each other. 📸 - Hatchling Narrow-bridged Musk Turtles @bfreebz by @michael.skibstedd
558
a year ago
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A lot of my writing lately has been directed at research papers and longer-term projects. It’s left me with little time to be on Instagram. On the one hand, I am grateful for the opportunities to take deep, thought-provoking, dives into various subjects, but on the other, I miss sharing the world of turtles more broadly. It’s a fact that papers in the sciences are generally important building blocks of knowledge, but it’s also true that generally, very few people read them.In an attempt to bridge the paper-Instagram divide, I wanted to showcase some recent results from an analysis I helped with focused on cooter movement in a central Florida spring. Movement ecology is a fascinating discipline, as it allows us to both enter into the lives, and better understand the day-to-day, of turtles and other organisms. For this particular study, 48 individuals representing two species (the Florida Red-bellied Cooter and Peninsula Cooter) were outfitted with radio transmitters and tracked for nearly a year. The tracking itself was intensive. I did not participate in it, but many hours on the water were necessary. Unlike a satellite telemeter, which, as the name suggests, communicates via satellite, radio transmitters typically only broadcast signals over short distances. This necessitates using a receiver antenna to track a tagged animal, which laborious in itself, is further complicated by the fact that when aquatic turtles submerge signals are often muddied. It pays off though. We had 1,061 cooter movements to analyze by the time the field component of the project ended. We looked at a variety of movement metrics, and figured most would differ between each species, and the sexes. However, the most interesting takeaway was that no significant relationships emerged relative to our hypotheses. Instead, the cooters, irrespective of species, clustered into two primary movement modes. One movement mode was characterized by longer movements >500 m throughout the study, while the other mode was characterized by turtles that moved much less. Now it would be interesting to know how social facilitation structures these patterns. by @michael.skibstedd
2
a year ago
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As social workers, we know that everyone needs a little help sometimes, including this snapping turtle that somehow got into our courtyard! After a staff member noticed him wandering around with no easy path out, the school rallied to his aid. We contacted @michael.skibstedd '26, a student at @ugaecology, who quickly came to the rescue. Michael studies snapping turtles, and recently wrote a book chapter about them for Lynx Nature Books Handbook of the Reptiles of the World. Together, we located a convenient spot along the river, and Michael climbed down and released our new friend back into his home. Thanks to everyone who participated in this @universityofga cross-disciplinary rescue mission! #UGASSWTurtleRescue #turtles by @michael.skibstedd
31
a year ago
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Along with writing, data analysis/academic masochism, and logistics, gratitude was a big theme of the year for me. I often found myself trying to fully immerse in the moment - or the idea - usually unsuccessfully. Many doors were opened this year, for which I am immensely grateful. I got to really chew on a wide range of subjects, from the physics of softshell hydrodynamics to the drivers of global turtle diversity. I spent a large amount of time appreciating turtle richness in the southeastern United States. For those of us who live here, we are very lucky to be in such a hotbed not only for turtles, but for most freshwater fauna. We should start thinking of more creative ways to bring more financial resources into the protection of this natural heritage though. I think this is an important future focus of turtle conservation and southeastern US conservation broadly. This appreciation was particularly salient in the field this year. I was able to explore many unique ecosystems in ten states, from the confusing cattle tanks in the Sonoran Desert to Florida’s magnificent freshwater springs to northern Illinois’ prairie systems. For my third year in a row, I was fortunate to spend time at the @bfreebz field station with @turtlesurvival. The station borders the Maya Mountain Massif, which connects it with the largest tract of primary tropical forest north of the equator. It is really a biodiversity mecca beyond strictly turtles. This year we surpassed 1,000 marked individual animals for the long-term study on the property. Without such a solid team, half this number would have been difficult to obtain in four years. Much of my travel this year was made possible by external sources. It is amazing to me how many resources there are to support students, and I’m honored to have been a beneficiary of a portion of these from @universityofga 30 people donated their time to talk with us on @cheloniacast. We had some of the most inspiring and informative conversations yet. To my family, friends, colleagues, and mentors, I am constantly learning from you, your fan, and grateful to have your company and guidance. I am looking forward to the work, and fun times, ahead. by @michael.skibstedd
4
2 years ago
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